Color negative photographic materials are widely utilized in the world, and there are many kinds of color negative materials having different properties in accordance with their intended use. One example of general use of such a material is a picture-taking color negative photographic material which is finally converted into a color positive photographic material, such as a color printing paper, a color transparency or the like to be viewed by human eyes. Another example of use of such a material is conversion of a formed positive image (for example, a color transparency) into a different positive image (for example, a color printing paper) for its final view. There is a color negative photographic material which can be used for such conversion, and the intermediate negative material to be used for positive(original)-negative-positive conversion is known as a color inter-negative.
On the other hand, the intermediate negative material to be used for negative(original)-positive-negative or negative(original)-positive-negative-positive-negative conversion has widely been used as a color-intermediate film in the movie industry. It is absolutely necessary that these types of intermediate photographic materials faithfully reproduce original positives or original negatives, and for attaining this purpose, various improvements and studies of photographic materials have heretofore been made but the improvements are still insufficient. Naturally, from the viewpoint of reproduction of originals, general picture-taking color photographic materials are also needed to be improved further.
As one means of improving color reproducibility and sharpness of photographic materials, for example, use of so-called DIR compounds such as those described in JP-A 54-145135, 56-114946 and 57-151944 is well known. (The term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application".) As another more recent means of improving color reproducibility and sharpness, the use of couplers capable of releasing a development inhibiting compound via two timing groups such as the couplers described in JP-A 60-218645, 61-156127, 1-280755, JP-A-63-37346 corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,861,701 and European Patent Laid-Open Nos. 348,139, 354,532 and 403,019 is also known. Use of such timing DIR couplers is effective for improving the interlayer effect and the edge effect to improve the color reproducibility and sharpness of photographic materials to a certain degree in many cases. However, these timing DIR couplers still have various inconvenient drawbacks. The interlayer effect and the edge effect are not satisfactory if the amount of the development inhibiting compound to be released from the timing DIR couplers is not sufficient to inhibit development. Also, the inhibiting effect of the timing DIR couplers is negligible if the light-sensitive layer to be inhibited by the released compound has not been developed to some degree. In addition, if the developing activity of the light-sensitive silver halides is high (or if the light-sensitive silver halides are developed rapidly), the inhibiting effect of the above-mentioned DIR couplers and timing DIR couplers is noticeably retarded so that the couplers can hardly attain the intended result.
In order to improve the color reproducibility of photographic materials, a masking technology using colored couplers has been proposed, but the use of such couplers is naturally limited because coloration of the colored couplers themselves is used. On the other hand, not only the above-mentioned intermediate photographic materials but also general color photographic materials are stored after development and then may be used to make prints after several decades storage, which is a long time. After such long storage, the conventional photographic materials often encounter problems in that the color image formed has become "thin" and has lost its contrast or has been decolored. Persons involved in the technical field of photographic materials have studied and investigated these problems for a long period of time in attempts to overcome them but, until now, no satisfactory solutions have been found.